My Tools: Windows Live Writer

The other day, I posted about the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. What you didn’t know was that I was playing with a blogging program while I was typing up that post. It was tons of fun, and I decided that I will use it more! I’ve had it on my computer ever since I tried it for Great Grandma’s Journal transcription. I forgot all about it until this weekend. Then I got curious about how it could work for what I blog about now. Well color me surprised! There’s a lot packed into this program! It’s called Windows Live Writer.

I liked being able to see what it would look like with my layout. Depending on your blog layout, you will see more or less here. I just like seeing how it would look on my background.

It’s as easy and point and click to insert images and links!

Even entering tables is easy as pie! Tables aren’t exactly popular among coders anymore, but for beginning webmasters, they are a layout dream. I used tables on all my layouts up until the last year or so. In fact, I still use tables on my index page on Moore Mays. It is sometimes easier then making sure that each browser will interpret your code the same. Trust me, the more complicated the code, the more hassle it is. Tables are a nice simple layout option.

I had the most fun playing with the image effects. You should have seen my face when I had instant rounded corners! I love rounded corners. I actually was trying to round the corners of everything in the beginning of this blog. However, to get the transparency I wanted, I had to save files as .png. That made the file size MUCH bigger than I liked.

The watermark feature was interesting too! Yet another Photoshop shortcut. I love those by the way. I don’t usually put watermarks on anything, because I’m not real worried about photo theft. If they want to get it, they get it. If you get my drift. I like how I could just add a little MoaG watermark in the bottom corner though. It made the pictures a little more personal to me. I won’t be in the habit of doing that but maybe on pictures I take on trips and post here, I will make the effort. So they are a bit more special.

Another favorite button of mine was the little Preview button at the bottom. This shows you EXACTLY what your post will look like once it’s posted. I like to use this often so I can make sure I have things laid out properly.

There is also a Source button there to show the raw code if you like that kind of thing. Along with the Source option, there is spell check! I don’t know what I would do without spell check so thank god for that!

You can do most everything in this program that you can do on your blog. Depending on the blogging program you use, maybe even more!

Including opening posts from your online blog! You can make some minor changes, I haven’t completely tried it yet. You can’t add the effects to pictures already posted though. I tried to get my rounded corners back in my first post and it didn’t work!

Overall, I’m really enjoying playing with this program. I can’t wait to find out what else there is to it. Definitely worth a download at least!